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All
Saints, Brandon Parva

This
poor, lonely church sits on its own at the end of
a half mile long track from the Barnham Broom to
Mattishall road. And yet, someone loves it,
because in recent months the graveyard has been
cleared of years of overgrowth, gravestones
recovered and laid out in a line, and work has
begun on restoring the structure of the building
to something like a sound state. It is a handsome
church, and if it was in a town or village it
would be easy to love. But years of neglect have
left it feeling sad and empty.

All Saints
is a great barn of a building, and there is
little heating, and of course no electricity.
Because of this, it is only used in summer, and
when we came here in early February it felt
abandoned. Peter was pleased to see the cleared
graveyard; he had found it almost impossible to
photograph the outside of the building a couple
of years previously. The only sign of life was an
incongruous pair of used wine glasses on a table
by the font. Mouldy peel in one suggested that
they had been used for Christmas punch after a
carol service a couple of months earlier.

There is no village, and the entire parish
has barely a dozen houses. But the main reason for the
air of abandonment inside is that the west end has been
cleared of clutter so that workmen can get to the tower
arch. This is one of the most singular examples in
Norfolk; trailing vines entwine around the hood mould,
and the whole piece sits on two massive heads.
Unfortunately, the keystone of the arch has slipped,
presumably as a result of movement in the tower, and an
ingenious wooden frame has been put in place to hold it
up until it can be mended.

The arch is surmounted by one of those
scriptural quotes so beloved of the evangelical movement
in the second half of the 19th century, and there are
others scattered around the church, looking rather out of
place in these modern days of quiet Anglican
spirituality.

The nave is dominated by the massive
memorial to John Warner in the south-east corner, his
bones tied up in a winding sheet at the bottom. John died
in 1702, and below on the wall is a very early
post-Reformation painted wall memorial to his ancestor
Richard Warner, who deceased the tenth daye of Maye
1587. On the floor in front of it is a fragment of a
brass inscription. It seems to be made of two separate
pieces, and so is probably a palimpsest, the back of a
previously reused brass. It is obviously pre-Reformation,
because it asks us in Latin to pray for the soul of
Christine Buck and to commend her soul to Almighty God.

The off-centre chancel (was there a south
aisle once?) is dominated by a very curious east window.
The upper lights of the Decorated tracery are crammed in
under a flattened arch. Mortlock thought it was
Victorian, but I think it must be earlier, because it
isn't shoddy as much as inarticulate. It looks like a
confection of the 18th century.

You
can see from outside that the wall has been
rebuilt at sometime with ragstone rather than
flint, which probably explains its current bulge.
It is not an East Anglian material. The glass
dates from the early 20th century, and depicts St
Peter and St Paul; flanking the Baptism of
Christ. They are all rather stern-faced and
severe, I fear.

However, it was definitely
the Victorians who reroofed the chancel, and this
is of a high quality, and a thorough imitation of
the medieval nave roof - the same people couldn't
possibly have been responsible for that window
tracery! Two bosses that are generally assumed to
have come from the old roof are on the organ and
the Priest's chair. One depicts the pelican in
its piety, feeding its chicks on blood, and the
other a rather alarming dove coming into land. I
am going to be a real killjoy and say that I
don't believe these carvings are medieval at all,
but probaby early 20th century creations set on
old backing bosses.

I had recently received an e-mail from
someone saying that a church only came alive when there
was a service on. I had disagreed. Our medieval churches
are folk museums and touchstones to the people of the
past, their lives and their liturgies, a hand reached out
to our friends and family down the long generations. The
modern liturgy of the Church of England is just a passing
fancy, and this has been true in any age of course. To be
honest, I always find services a bit of a distraction.
But here at Brandon Parva I thought that this was a
building that cried out for human company. Whatever our
final destiny may be, I am sure that it was never
intended that we should be alone.